Philosophy Weekend: Genocide is Not a Force of Nature

We speak of genocide as a problem from Hell, but we rarely speak of it as an ethical problem that can be solved. This suggests that we have ceased to think of genocide as a problem of human dimensions. We have become as superstitious about genocide as cave dwellers must have been about tornadoes and hurricanes: we see it as a rare force of nature, bigger and stronger than us. We hope the monster never comes our way, and if it ever does we plan to hide.

Philosophers need to get their courage back, because genocide is an ethical problem that must be solved. Organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International toil weakly to solve it as a political problem, while Doctors Without Borders fights it as a practical problem, striving year after year around the world to alleviate the pain. But none of these organizations are designed to analyze the psychological roots of the problem, or to propose great philosophical epiphanies that might change the world. Indeed, I know I must appear foolish when I suggest that any kind of moral epiphany could possibly help, even though I'm quite sure it could.

We should expect our best ethical philosophers to address this topic often, but the great thinkers of the 20th century shied away. Sartre did not manage to communicate clearly on the topic of genocide, nor did Nozick or Rawls or Tillich or Jaspers or (ahem) Heidegger. Today, we have a few well-known academic ethicists like Derek Parfit, but they tend to steer far clear of bold speculations about the causes of our worst real-world problems. Alain de Botton has created a clever and brazen philosophical website called The Philosophers Mall that attempts to connect trendy news stories about celebrities and pop culture to philosophical questions. De Botton is at least trying to think outside the box -- but a celebration of triviality in philosophy is the opposite of what we need the most.

We are a couple of weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the brutal genocide that took 800,000 lives in Rwanda in April 1994. I'm sure this 20th anniversary will generate some news blips, and perhaps a reminder of the disaster that is still occurring today in Darfur.

The anniversary of the disaster in Rwanda brings back many memories for me, even though I was nowhere near Africa in 1994. This happened to be a productive and transitional time of my life: I had just gotten promoted at my tech consulting job, had recently become a father, was about to become a father again. The world seemed very peaceful in April 1994. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Central Europe had become free. But the shocking headlines from Rwanda that began to appear every morning in the New York Times made no sense. Even the Times didn't seem to understand what was happening on the ground in this little-known nation across the world.

A hurricane. A tornado. A genocide. Do we really believe that an outbreak of ethnic hatred that results in hundreds of thousands of drunken machete-wielding murderers killing millions of cowering, crying men, women and children is a force of nature, bigger than ourselves? If so, why do we believe this? Have we tried to understand the root cause of genocide? Have we tried so hard and so repeatedly that we can truly say we must give up, that it's a problem we can't solve?

I don't think we have tried very hard. We have barely tried at all. Instead, we comfort ourselves with soapy moralizations. "Genocide is bad." The closest thing we have to a psychological model of genocide is that there's a thing called "evil" that sometimes infects other societies, but would certainly never infect our own. In other words, our common level of understanding of the real cause of genocide resembles an infantile fantasy.

We need better ethical philosophers, and braver ones.

I don't consider myself an impressive philosopher, and I certainly have no training or credentials. But I do have a couple of original ideas and a healthy willingness to embarrass myself in public, and that's why I'm going to continue to discuss this topic on this blog through the end of April. My recent blog posts on the topic may appear excessive (or obsessive), but I do have an overall goal in mind, and I'm working towards a conclusion. I've laid out a few principles, and now I'm ready to put forth a single bold new idea.

The new idea will be the subject of next weekend's blog post. This is a difficult and tricky blog post to write, and I will need another week to fully think it through. I'll present a teaser today, a preview of the conclusion I believe I'm approaching.

When we puzzle over genocide, we often ask how it can be possible that good people can do such terrible things. We may be asking the wrong question here. A close analysis of the worst atrocities of the last hundred years shows that individual psychology and individual motivations don't really come into play when a genocide occurs. Analyzing a genocide by looking at the emotions, beliefs and motivations of any individual person is like trying to analyze automobile traffic by looking at the emotions, beliefs and motivations of a single driver. We're analyzing at the wrong level.

Indeed, the people who commit genocides often feel nearly as powerless as their victims. In order to understand the cause of genocide, we need to rise from the level of individual psychology to the level of group psychology. Important note: this does not mean the psychology of the individual within the group. It means the psychology of the group itself.

That's as much as I can write at this point, and the full explanation of what I'm trying to say will appear here next weekend.

4 Responses to "Philosophy Weekend: Genocide is Not a Force of Nature"

by mtmynd on Saturday, March 29, 2014 12:47 pm

Let's at least begin this conversation with a proper definition which I find very helpful towards setting the stage, a starting point to work from.

Genocide : (n) the deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular group or nation.

What must be accepted here is any deliberate killing of a large group requires an equally large group to do the killing. Also, not everyone initiating the genocide comes through the act without any harm, either bodily or psychologically. That is impossible for all but a very few who already are psychologically unable to cope within any social level at all, i.e. psychopaths.

If we agree with that, at least as a starting point, I would follow up with a question as to why this group or collective madness became as violent and deadly as any genocide ends. I don't think that this level of hatred and brutality has a philosophical answer as much as a psychological premise based upon one of several social fragments that the initiator of the genocide has finally reached their tipping point, going over the edge in a desperate defensive reaction that dispels logic and reasoning and becomes simply a savage assault upon the opposing side at any and all costs, the devil be damned furor that must be within any "genocidal pack" out to destroy.

Could it be land and limited resources that was the final straw? Perhaps such a devotional stance towards their own belief system that the attackers feel are being threatened..? (an overly zealous religiosity often causes violent out lashes if there is a perceived threat)... and of course there is the sexual motive that should not be ignored, sex being one of, if not the strongest biological drivers within most living things... the harassment of one's interest can develop into a violent reaction (I think of our deep south and the racial problems for decades, when a black man flirted or in some way showed interest in a white woman often resulted in a hanging or other tasteless killing to show the other blacks what will happen if they....), put that on a larger scale and some level of a genocidal idea could easily develop.

I see your questions here, Levi, as a search for something as hideous and seemingly unnecessary as genocide is, a reaction for our hu'manity to deal with. Is genocide a purely hu'man group reaction to another hu'man action or is it a natural reaction such as a natural phenomenon like an avalanche or an earthquake, a tornado or hurricane, perhaps a wild fire started by a lightning storm and a drought-ridden forest? We don't put the finger of blame upon nature. We do call upon our god(s) whenever something we do not understand or are unable to accept, taking what nature has done personally, as our god(s) telling us something that we feel guilt over (guilt is always an impetus for calling upon our god(s)). These are psychological and logical/rational searches for the genocide questions you proposed.

I look forward to next Sunday's topic, Levi, and anticipate what you have to say about our ability/desire to collectively join together in order to kill off a population that we feel is interfering with our personal lives. Is it or is it not a natural phenomenon of our hu'manity?

Thanks, Mtmynd, and let me make sure my own answer is clear. As I say in this blog post's title, I am very sure that genocide is not a force of nature, is not inevitable, and is not even difficult to understand once we begin to try to understand it.

I don't think genocides occur because of greed for wealth or land, and I don't think sexual aggression is needed to explain it. The motivation that can explain every genocide in recent history is fear. Once you start comparing the evidence from known historical incidents together and applying simple deductive techniques, this conclusion becomes obvious.

Re: "The motivation that can explain every genocide in recent history is fear."

I fully agree. And that fear may posit itself thru various examples I listed. Fear is not fearful until it is manifested, which would include the subject at hand, genocide, that occurs due to an unreasonable amount fear of that which is being attacked.

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Suspicion, it turns out, is even more dangerous than hatred. Different ethnic groups can hate each other and still coexist in peace for centuries. It's only when they become suspicious of each other that genocides and atrocities occur.

This is the gift of hate -- and hate is, indeed, the gift that keeps on giving. We've since handed it on to other unwilling and undeserving recipients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now they suffer with the gift too. It's still with us today, and we see it everywhere. Look at the self-hatred so many Americans still feel, ten years after the horrifying day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. This knot of rage, this tar baby, this glutinous mass -- it is still inside us, whether we like it or not ...

We tend to think about genocide in personal terms, but the strategic rationale for genocide is never based on emotion -- not prejudice, not hatred, not sexual aggression, not personal greed, not religious belief -- but rather always on the cold calculus of total war.

The Bob McDonnell scandal was about much more than greed. If you ache to own a Rolex, you suffer from greed. If you ache to be seen wearing a Rolex: well, you are suffering from something, but it's probably not greed.

Just as a river is stronger by levels of magnitude than any individual swimmer, decisions made during time of war seem to always follow a natural logic that is more powerful by levels of magnitude than that of any individual's personality or character. In these situations, we begin to operate according to the logic of the herd mind.

In Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, two men are sitting in a cafe in a small French town when the improbable news arrives that a rhinoceros was seen in town. Soon the two men look out the window to see several rhinoceroses rampaging through the streets. They are surprised at this development, of course ... and then one of the two men starts transforming into a rhinoceros as well.

Militarism permeates our brains. We soak in it. The current dialogue in the USA over gun control is a great example, because this should be a debate about how Americans should behave in cities and towns and neighborhoods and communities. Gun control is, or should be, a domestic issue. It's really not about war.

I've been trying to develop a theory on this blog -- a theory that I'm finding difficult to explain because the basic idea is so obvious that it barely merits the lofty term 'theory'. And yet it must be a theory, because its implications are important, and stand in surprising contrast to the way we tend to think about global conflicts ...

Because the enigmatic South African novelist J. M. Coetzee's first novel 'Dusklands' is out of print, I always figured the book must have been a weak start to a great career. Oh. My. God ... was I wrong.

If you care about your personal privacy, and if you don't like the government snooping into your phone records and Internet activities, you ought to be a pacifist. The culture of militarism will never be consistent with a culture of privacy.

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Suspicion, it turns out, is even more dangerous than hatred. Different ethnic groups can hate each other and still coexist in peace for centuries. It's only when they become suspicious of each other that genocides and atrocities occur.

This is the gift of hate -- and hate is, indeed, the gift that keeps on giving. We've since handed it on to other unwilling and undeserving recipients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now they suffer with the gift too. It's still with us today, and we see it everywhere. Look at the self-hatred so many Americans still feel, ten years after the horrifying day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. This knot of rage, this tar baby, this glutinous mass -- it is still inside us, whether we like it or not ...

We tend to think about genocide in personal terms, but the strategic rationale for genocide is never based on emotion -- not prejudice, not hatred, not sexual aggression, not personal greed, not religious belief -- but rather always on the cold calculus of total war.

The Bob McDonnell scandal was about much more than greed. If you ache to own a Rolex, you suffer from greed. If you ache to be seen wearing a Rolex: well, you are suffering from something, but it's probably not greed.

Just as a river is stronger by levels of magnitude than any individual swimmer, decisions made during time of war seem to always follow a natural logic that is more powerful by levels of magnitude than that of any individual's personality or character. In these situations, we begin to operate according to the logic of the herd mind.

In Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, two men are sitting in a cafe in a small French town when the improbable news arrives that a rhinoceros was seen in town. Soon the two men look out the window to see several rhinoceroses rampaging through the streets. They are surprised at this development, of course ... and then one of the two men starts transforming into a rhinoceros as well.

Militarism permeates our brains. We soak in it. The current dialogue in the USA over gun control is a great example, because this should be a debate about how Americans should behave in cities and towns and neighborhoods and communities. Gun control is, or should be, a domestic issue. It's really not about war.

I've been trying to develop a theory on this blog -- a theory that I'm finding difficult to explain because the basic idea is so obvious that it barely merits the lofty term 'theory'. And yet it must be a theory, because its implications are important, and stand in surprising contrast to the way we tend to think about global conflicts ...

Because the enigmatic South African novelist J. M. Coetzee's first novel 'Dusklands' is out of print, I always figured the book must have been a weak start to a great career. Oh. My. God ... was I wrong.

If you care about your personal privacy, and if you don't like the government snooping into your phone records and Internet activities, you ought to be a pacifist. The culture of militarism will never be consistent with a culture of privacy.